Racism Holds South Africa Back

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Racism Holds South Africa Back

This is Part 2 in a three-part series.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – When Raven Naidoo entered university in the 1980s, he couldn't study engineering because of his Indian ancestry.

"I was only allowed into certain universities that didn't offer the courses I wanted," he says. "To become an engineer, I had to apply to the Minister of Education to get permission to study, and they said no."

It was just one example of the absurd levels to which the previous apartheid government stooped in order to enforce the privileges of a white minority, he says. Before the arrival of multiracial democracy in South Africa in 1994, the country's unequal education policies had barred most non-white South Africans from competing for the best jobs. "This is a major reason why the pool of non-white professionals is so small today," Naidoo continues. "It just wasn't considered necessary to have black engineers."

Now, after a decade of freedom, Naidoo's own experience reflects the ways in which life in this country of 43 million people has changed for the better. He and two partners now head up a small technology consulting firm, Radian, that has helped local government to design a new user-friendly Internet portal, and has also worked to bring Internet access to libraries in the sprawling, impoverished township of Khayelitsha a few miles away. Naidoo's small company shares offices in the Bandwidth Barn, a tech startup incubator in downtown Cape Town that is sponsored in part by local government, with a vibrant bunch of entrepreneurs pursuing myriad business ideas: bulk SMS distribution, Web-based English instruction and online mediation services, to name a few.

These achievements all would have been unthinkable during the stifling days of apartheid rule, when the role of government was to oppress and control, rather than to serve, the majority of South Africans. Nevertheless, Naidoo remains unsatisfied. Much of apartheid's legacy still needs to be undone, he says.

A decade on, South Africa uniquely straddles the developed and developing worlds, with a wealthy minority enjoying living standards comparable to Spain's while coexisting with an impoverished black majority. Despite the growth of a sizeable black middle class, old racial divisions are largely reinforced by continuing economic inequalities. No other country except Brazil has such disparities of wealth. This schism is particularly apparent in South Africa's burgeoning technology industry, which remains largely white.

"South Africa used to have racial apartheid," says Philipp Schmidt, a researcher with Bridges.org, a digital-divide policy organization with offices in Cape Town and Washington, D.C. "Now in terms of the digital divide, we still have that separation."

On the one hand, this is the country of Mark Shuttleworth, who rose on the success of his Internet verification company, Thawte Consulting, to become the first African in space. His is the name South Africans proudly mention to illustrate this country's emergence as a global player. With 5 percent of the global software market, South Africa now counts itself among the top 25 IT countries. But at the same time, a 2002 study conducted by the city of Cape Town found that 67 percent of respondents had never used a computer before, and only 14 percent had Internet access.

Driving through Sandton, the gleaming northern suburb of Johannesburg, one shares the road with shiny new BMWs, and glimpses familiar logos adorning sleek buildings: Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Merrill Lynch. Wi-Fi hot spots are rolling out in airports, conference centers, posh hotels and trendy cafes where the well-heeled congregate. Just a few miles away, however, residents of black townships like Alexandra and Soweto are crowded into tiny matchbox houses and squalid shacks. Hunger is common in these parts, while computers and even basic telephone lines are scarce.

It is from this hand-to-mouth world that Shirley Dlamini comes. And it is through IT that she hopes to escape the poverty of her childhood. Raised in Soweto by unemployed grandparents who struggled to support a large extended family, she was lucky to finish high school, let alone university.

When she arrived at CIDA University, an experimental business school that caters to promising students from disadvantaged backgrounds, she had never used a computer before. Nevertheless, when a group of local IT companies established an Information and Communications Technology Academy at CIDA a couple of years ago, she signed up without hesitation.

"It wasn't something I had always wanted to do, because I had never been exposed to computers before," she says. "I saw an opportunity which I was interested in, and when I got into it I very much liked what I experienced."

Dlamini calls herself a pioneer. She is one of the few people from her neighborhood to step across this country's formidable digital divide. "I never knew anybody who had done network engineering or programming in Soweto," she says. She will become even more of a pioneer when she graduates next year and enters the IT work force.

Private companies, government agencies and organizations across the country have made numerous efforts to train more black IT professionals and increase access to technology among the poor. The government has embraced a policy of black economic empowerment to encourage black-owned businesses. An industry-wide tech charter, which lays out plans to transform the industry, is now being finalized.

But experts say these measures are simply not enough. Meanwhile, young students such as Dlamini are proving themselves eager to learn. For example, the ICT Academy at CIDA received 600 applications from students last year when it was established, but could only take the top 121.

Kevin Lourens, who is managing director of Internet software company Cambrient in Johannesburg and has been involved in the creation of the tech charter, says South Africa needs to follow India's example.

"Twenty-five years ago, they decided they needed to prioritize engineering skills, so they actually went out and created an education infrastructure for it," he says. "Whereas here what's happened to date has been more around trying to fix the mistakes of the past, and we haven't put strategies in place to create the next generation of black technology people."

This shortage of black IT workers often creates dilemmas for Mohammed Jabbie, who started the firm Zenzele Recruitment with the explicit aim of transforming the marketplace.

While 90 percent of the contracts he gets request black workers, he says he simply can't find enough of them to fill the demand, particularly for positions requiring more-specialized programming skills. He says companies don't always make allowances for the fact that until recently, most South Africans were denied the opportunity to enter technology fields.

"They say a candidate must have six years of experience, but where are you going to get someone with six years of experience?" he says. "Most people applying are white, and the client is in a hurry, so you end up taking mostly white people for those skills."

But Dlamini says she is confident that change is happening. "I think it's getting there," she says. "The next generation will probably want to go into this field. It's very exciting."